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Abstract:

Sebastian Kolowa University College (SEKUCo), part of the Tumaini University, was started in the last three years. SEKUCo grew in both number of students as in number of courses, including a new department of eco-tourism and nature conservation. The University College is located in the Lushoto District in the Western Usambara Mountains in Tanzania. This region is famous for its tropical rain forest, rich in biodiversity and the mountains are an important watershed for Panga and Umbara rivers that supply water for various uses. However, there have been severe degradations of forests and basically the remaining pockets are still experiencing a lot of pressure from local communities for different purposes like commercial logging for wood supplies and slash and burn practices for agricultural purposes. An overexploitation of the land, due to a growing population struggling for means of livelihood, leads to environmental problems such as soil erosion and a decline in soil fertility. Challenges for future development in this region are therefore to tackle these problems and to simultaneously make use of the many trumps the region holds, including potentials for nature conservation as well as sustainable eco-tourism. Looking to the future is looking to the students of today and high quality education that aims to increase sustainable land use is indispensable. In order to support the education programme within the department of eco-tourism and nature conservation and to increase local knowledge on land use planning and design, a design workshop will be organized from 24/01/2011 until 28.01/2011 by the Catholic University of Leuven, department of earth and environmental sciences, Belgium. The project area of the workshop includes the SEKUCo campus within its broader environment. The central idea is to develop a route and to define options for landscape improvement and ecotouristic development along this route, taking into consideration arguments of sustainability of the Western Usambara and local participation. The workshop will a.o. include identification of stakeholders involved, a SWOT analysis of the area, the development of an album of pictures, stories and storylines, development of a masterplan and selection of key locations on the route for further analysis and design, etc. Not everything will be “finished” in a week’s time, but in the first place this project should become a trigger for a multiplicative process of greater detail, growing local involvement and long term vision for ecotouristic development in the Western Usambaras.